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Mayarí fire, January 2023 Mayarí, Segundo Frente

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2023, 07:29 UTC

The fire started on 19 January 2023 in Mayarí, Cuba, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,356 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Holguín since 2016 (of 30 with a page). Number 5 in Cuba in 2023, of 46.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mayarí · 2023Mayarí · 2017Cueto · 2023

Burnt area
2,356ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
19 Jan 2023 – 5 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
19 Jan
2023
Heat detections
135
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
73MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jan5 Feb
5 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jan 2023 · 90 MW · 10 20 Jan 2023 · 324 MW · 14 21 Jan 2023 · 34 MW · 6 23 Jan 2023 · 9 MW · 2 26 Jan 2023 · 220 MW · 18 27 Jan 2023 · 151 MW · 20 28 Jan 2023 · 19 MW · 2 29 Jan 2023 · 7 MW · 5 30 Jan 2023 · 48 MW · 14 31 Jan 2023 · 31 MW · 6 1 Feb 2023 · 69 MW · 11 2 Feb 2023 · 55 MW · 13 3 Feb 2023 · 19 MW · 10 4 Feb 2023 · 18 MW · 2 5 Feb 2023 · 1 MW · 1
19 Jan 20 Jan 23 Jan 28 Jan 31 Jan 3 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

30°high
55km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 13 Feb.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Mayarí where it started
    1,670 ha reached on 18 Jan
    1.2 %
  2. Segundo Frente
    698 ha reached on 19 Jan
    1.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
18 Jan 26.9 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
19 Jan 27.8 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
20 Jan 28.7 °C 43 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
21 Jan 28.4 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
22 Jan 28.8 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Jan 29.7 °C 44 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
24 Jan 28.2 °C 44 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Jan 27.6 °C 55 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
26 Jan 29.2 °C 45 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
27 Jan 28.5 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
28 Jan 27.5 °C 49 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
29 Jan 26.4 °C 58 % 54 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
30 Jan 28.0 °C 50 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
31 Jan 27.9 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
1 Feb 27.7 °C 58 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Feb 27.3 °C 55 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
3 Feb 28.1 °C 53 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
4 Feb 27.4 °C 58 % 35 km/h 0.9 mm Low 10
5 Feb 28.7 °C 55 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm Low 11
6 Feb after 29.7 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
7 Feb after 26.9 °C 60 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
8 Feb after 28.1 °C 54 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
9 Feb after 28.1 °C 55 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
10 Feb after 28.5 °C 53 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
11 Feb after 29.1 °C 50 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Feb after 28.7 °C 54 % 18 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
13 Feb after 27.3 °C 60 % 31 km/h 1.9 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 12 Jan 2023
After · 12 Feb 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 21 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
17181920212223242526272829303112345678
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 135Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cuba ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mayarí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 January 2023 and 5 February 2023: 18 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,356 hectares (23.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mayarí (1,670 ha, 1.2 %); Segundo Frente (698 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cuba (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 105 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 105.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 135 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.